Book Reviews

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Making Our Journeys Matter

by
Olive O. Barrozo | May 22, 2017

Photo by Lex Mempin, IT Operations Support Systems

Travelling can be one of the
most exciting experiences in
our lives. Just like passing the
board exams, buying a new house,
or seeing a long-lost loved one, the
thrill of going somewhere unfamiliar
can be staggering, the delightful
anticipation exhilarating.

Apart from feasting on the sights, sounds,
and staples of the new place, we can enrich
our experiences by reflecting deeper,
making art out of ordinary things. Not so
fun? Considering we’re on a vacation? It can
actually be strange but stimulating.

In The Art of Travel, author Alain de Botton tells us that: “Journeys
are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal
conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. There is an almost
quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts
we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring
large views, and new thoughts, new places. Introspective reflections
that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of
the landscape…”

From departing to various destinations, to motives, landscape, and art,
to returning home, de Botton introduces us to prominent writers, poets,
painters as guides in reflecting on the poetry and art of even the most
mundane things. For instance, poet and philosopher Charles Baudelaire
who was a lifelong traveler, loved the clouds: … I love the clouds…the
clouds that pass by…over there…over there…those lovely clouds!

Painter and printmaker Edward Hopper found poetry in the often
ignored landscapes of hotels, roads and petrol stations, diners and
cafeterias, and trains. Another guide is poet William Wordsworth who
went on long walks in the mountains and along the lakeshore, inspiring
him to write poems about nature, such as: The cock is crowing/The
stream is flowing/The small birds twitter,/The lake doth glitter…/There’s
joy in the mountains;/There’s life in the fountains;/Small clouds are
sailing,/Blue sky prevailing.

Wordsworth was the original advocate of our present-day nature
trips. “By the time of the poet’s death at the age of eighty, in
1850 (by which half of the population of England and Wales
was urban), serious critical opinion seemed almost universally
sympathetic to his suggestion that regular travel through nature
was a necessary antidote to the evils of the city.”

Victorian era art critic, draughtsman, and watercolourist John
Ruskin also inspires de Botton with his sharp commentary on the
significance of details. Ruskin “deplored the blindness and haste of
modern tourists, especially those who prided themselves on covering
Europe in a week by train: ‘No changing of place at a hundred miles
an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There was
always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so
slowly; they will see it no better for going fast…’”

Although de Botton himself may not be as inveterate a traveler as
Ferdinand Magellan or Thomas Cook (expressing “a degree of sympathy
for those who, even in the most fascinating cities, have occasionally
been visited by a strong wish to remain in bed and take the next
flight home”), his book is inspiring, giving us food for thought as we
embark on our own journeys. Decidedly more useful than a travel
guide, it emboldens us to look beyond the manmade wonders and the
overwhelming consumer attractions of foreign lands. With profound
thinkers as guides, we should be able to make our experiences matter
not only because we took selfies with world famous landmarks as
background but because we noticed the pain and tiredness in the eyes
of the street vendor selling trinkets to haggling tourists or empathized
with the sweaty old rickshaw driver, overstraining his muscles from
pulling overweight passengers. Details can be disturbing but they
comprise the realities of travel that fancy travel brochures never
mention. CC:

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